If you’ve been to the PC-BSD website this week, you will have noticed that it has a shiny new look. Besides being pretty, some new features were added during the redesign:

there is a new menu system for organizing content

the web backend has been updated

you can now chat on the #pcbsd IRC channel from your web browser (no IRC client required)

comments are enabled with Facebook and Twitter integration

blog entries automatically appear on the website’s main page

there is now a search bar for finding content

We hope you enjoy the new look! Leave a comment if you have any features that you would like to see included or notice anything that didn’t survive the migration from the old to the new website format.

Earlier this year, iXsystems and the FreeBSD Foundation sponsored Bjoern Zeeb (a FreeBSD committer and recipient of the Itojun Service Award for his contributions to IPv6) to improve FreeBSD’s implementation of IPv6. That work included the creation of IPv6-only testing versions of both FreeBSD and PC-BSD in time for World IPv6 Day. As far as we know, the PC-BSD version is the first desktop operating system with a pure IPv6 kernel that does not rely on any IPv4 code. You can read the official press release on prweb.

The PC-BSD testing version is based on PC-BSD 9.0 and is available for download from North American and European mirrors. If you would like to try it out, you’ll find that it is as easy to install as any other PC-BSD snapshot. However, if you wish to connect to the Internet from your IPv6-only system, you will need access to an ISP or third-party service (such as tunnelbroker) that provides IPv6 addresses and a router capable of tunneling IPv6 traffic.

We hope to get as many testers as possible to report on any error messages that they encounter. We expect that some code, especially in third-party applications, won’t know how to deal with IPv6-only. As these errors are reported, they can be submitted to the correct committer to be fixed. Send your reports to the PC-BSD testing mailing list.

It should also be noted that the FreeBSD website and all of the PC-BSD infrastructure (website, forums, etc.) is IPv6 enabled with AAAA records. If you are participating in World IPv6 Day, be sure to visit the PC-BSD and FreeBSD websites!

Kris has written an article “Installing FreeBSD with pc-sysinstall” which has been published on pages 26–28 in the June issue of BSD Mag. You can download that issue for free from here. From the introduction:

Several months ago, the PC-SYSINSTALL system (the installer for PC-BSD 8.0 and higher) was merged into FreeBSD CURRENT, in preparation for FreeBSD 9.0. This installer is primarily a backend, but it can also be used stand-alone for multiple scripted or single installations of FreeBSD. In this article we will take a look at how to use PC-SYSINSTALL, as well as various configuration options to take advantage of FreeBSD features which currently cannot be used via the default installer.

Members of the PC-BSD team will be attending Southeast Linuxfest in Spartanburg, SC, June 10–12. Conference registration is free.

On Saturday, June 11, Kris Moore will give a presentation entitled “Introduction to PC-BSD” and Dru Lavigne will give a presentation entitled “How Can I Contribute to Open Source?”. The rest of the day they will be available at the BSD booth in the expo area. Be sure to drop by the booth to say hi and to pickup some free swag and a PC-BSD DVD.

For those interested in taking the BSD certification exam at this event, it will be held on Sunday morning.

An update to Adobe Flash is now available in the System Updates tab of Software Manager. The update addresses the security vulnerabilities described here. After applying the update, simply restart any open web browsers so that they will use the new version of flash.